Girl Rides the Wind

by Jacques Antoine

  “Is this a private party, Lieutenant Commander, or can anybody join?” Captain Tim Martinovich asked as he slid his tray along the table, not waiting for an answer. The entire airwing knew him as Tunafish, even if Emily resisted this informality. He’d been her flight instructor at Camp Pendleton, even been at her “winging” ceremony, but none of that mattered, especially when Perry had gotten her into such a foul mood.

  Perry turned to look, half-surprised at the interruption, until he remembered where they were. “No, sir, please join us,” Emily said, relieved to be able to change the subject.

  “Because I can’t have you rattling my nugget’s cage, Mr. Hankinson,” he said. “We’ve got a full slate of fast-rope exercises this afternoon with the Chinese this afternoon, and I need her at the top of her game.”

  “He still calls you his nugget after how many hundreds of hours on the stick?” Perry asked.

  “If you keep ‘sirring’ me at all the wrong moments, I’m gonna have to ask the devil-dogs what the latest call sign for you is,” Martinovich said. “I’m sure the high-and-tights down in the training room can tell me.”

  “It’s Ninja,” she muttered.

  “That’s not very imaginative,” Perry said. “It’s like they’re not even trying. Though I guess it’s an improvement over Canine.”

  “Canine?” Martinovich asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” Emily said.

  “At least it’s not Bosnia.”

  “Bosnia?” Perry asked, as Emily made a show of leaning over to examine Martinovich’s rear end.

  “You’ve been ashore too long, Mr. Hankinson. It mean’s Fat Ass, more or less,” he said. “And yes, Miss Tenno, I realize this flight suit doesn’t flatter my hind quarters, but at least they’re ‘Standard Navy Issue’.”

  “As is your butt… sir,” Emily said.

  “I don’t think anyone can say the same about yours.”

  “Can we change the subject?” Perry said.

  “Sure,” Martinovich said. “How about we discuss Ninja’s troubles finding a place to stow that shotgun onboard my Phrog?”

  “Won’t it fit behind her seat?”

  “It fell out during a hard bank the other day.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. It’s not gonna go off by accident. All the safeties were set. It just needs a bit of sticky.”

  “Why does she even need all that ordinance on her person anyway? A standard sidearm is plenty, especially if it’s that cannon she’s got strapped on her hip.”

  “What can I say? I believe in being prepared.”

  “Have you tried writing her up for it?” Perry asked with a wink in her direction.

  “Yeah, right. Like your compadre wouldn’t make me eat the paper, and if he didn’t, I’d probably hear about it from the Admiral. It really is like having a spec-ops co-pilot… and don’t get me started about the sword she insists on bringing along. I mean, that damn thing has gotta be at least two feet long. Is a Ka-Bar too small for her?”

  “I’m just testing out the shoulder-rig I have for it. But if it makes you feel any better, I won’t bring it on any more training missions.”

  “You crack me up, Tenno. Don’t you know it makes me feel just that little bit safer knowing you’re armed to the teeth in the seat next to me?”

  * * *

  Of course, Emily’s absence from the XO’s wardroom left Kiku in an uncomfortable position. Her own English skills sufficed to translate what Kano said for the Americans, but she could not always translate what the Americans said for him. Cpl Iwatani helped out from time to time, when he wasn’t occupied with Capt Ongpin, since his knowledge of English was better, but she feared the inference Kano might make about her mission-relevance if she relied too much on his assistance.

  “The Marianas exercises will come just in time,” the XO, Capt Robert “Tex” Torricelli said, after everyone had cleared the buffet line. “There were still some rough edges to be worked out in the last action.”

  “Then it’s a good thing our intell was worthless,” Theo offered, as he shook out his napkin. “If we’d actually met any actual terrorists….”

  Torricelli scowled and Capt Ongpin chattered out some sort of protest, while Cpl Iwatani translated: “We are dependent on Chinese satellite imagery for the westward reef-islands. I cannot be held responsible for the delays in getting that data.”

  “Obviously, our satellite technology is years behind the Americans,” Capt Diao said in very polished English. “Perhaps if our hosts would be willing to reposition one of their many satellites a little further east, we could have all the accurate intell you require.”

  “You claim that these terrorists are working with the Moro Liberation Front,” Theo said. “But so far, we’ve seen no evidence of this. How about you show us the intell that supports that conjecture?”

  “Unfortunately, those files are classified above my security clearance,” Diao said.

  “That’s convenient,” Theo muttered.

  “It is possible that the terrorists have advance knowledge of the movements of this squadron.”

  “Since we remain behind the curve, do you mean they have access to better satellite data than you do, Mr. Diao?” Torricelli asked.

  “That would be strange, indeed,” Diao replied. “But could they not merely be responding to sightings of your AV-8B Harrier jets, or your ASW Helicopters, which typically precede the squadron’s arrival, and do not remain hidden behind the horizon?”

  “Can they really pack up everything in two hours?” Kano said, after a tedious passage of translations managed by Lt Otani and Cpl Iwatani. “That hardly seems plausible.”

  “Perhaps sightings from the earlier raids…” Diao said, until Theo interrupted.

  “They didn’t remove everything. What about all those stubbed out Chunghwa’s we found at the first encampment?”

  “Yes,” Kano said. “There must not have been sufficient warning.”

  “I prefer Lucky Strikes,” Diao said. “Anyway, this tells us nothing. The Chunghwa brand is distributed widely.”

  “But it is most popular among ethnic Chinese throughout the region,” Cpl Iwatani blurted out. He went quiet after Capt Ongpin cleared his throat.

  “The ethnic Chinese have not been known to join terrorist groups,” Kiku added. “At least not…”

  “Are you insinuating that outside agents are working with the terrorists?” Diao glowered at her as he spoke.

  “There’s little evidence to support that conclusion,” Torricelli said. “What is clear, however, is that you have not achieved full operational readiness. I don’t want any friendly fire incidents.”

  “Two weeks of exercises in the Marianas ought to help with that,”

  Theo said.

  “I think some of your Marines are expecting sandy beaches and surf,” Diao said.

  “Oh, there will be some surf, but precious little sand. Mostly what we’ll see is the broken calderas of ancient volcanoes, with jagged, rocky shorelines and sheer cliffs.”

  “Sounds like a tea party,” Kano said, after hearing Kiku’s translation.

  “Then we return to CFA Sasebo to prepare for the second phase of Operation Seabreeze,” Torricelli said. As people filed out of the wardroom, he added for Theo’s benefit, “It wouldn’t hurt if we had more translators. Even around this table it’s hard for Otani and Iwatani to keep up.”

  Theo glanced at Kiku and said, “Don’t worry, sir. Hankinson’s talking to her. But, operationally, she can’t help much, unless we send her on the missions.”

  “I know SECNAV is curious about her, and the Admiral probably wouldn’t complain too loudly if she found herself at the front of an action, but it’s not gonna happen on my watch.”

  Kiku didn’t understand everything they said, but that it concerned her friend was clear enough. Michiko pushed limits in ways that shocked her, but for some reason the Americans did not share her horror at this… as if they had no sense of the improprieties.

>   Diao had lingered at the door, no doubt to listen in, and she pushed past him, shaking her head. In the passageway, she heard him proposing an expansion of Lt Tenno’s role in the upcoming exercises.

  “It’s a relatively safe way to see what she might be able to contribute,” she thought he said.

  Chapter 9

  Taue-ki

  The flight to Yonago was a little cheaper and much faster than taking the Bullet Train from Tokyo Central Station, but Gyoshin Heiji still preferred the train. She didn’t exactly know why, but it may have had something to do with the view the plane afforded of the castle that loomed over the city skyline.

  Iizuka-jo no longer belonged to the family, and in some sense it never had, since they had only ever controlled it through the favor of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The earliest occupants had taken the wrong side in the Battle of Sekigahara and paid for it with their lives, and the new Shogun had placed the gift of the castle in her ancestors’ hands. While no Heiji ever garrisoned the keep, the lords who did owed their position to them. With the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century, her family’s influence at court declined as precipitously as the Tokugawa Shogunate, and now the castle was little more than a reminder of that loss.

  A childhood memory came to her – climbing the steeply sloping stone walls of the ruined keep with her brother and her cousins. Done in the ancient nozurazumi-style, with gaps between the boulders, there were lots of hand-holds, and they’d come home scuffed and scraped, shrieking flush-faced for joy. When the Prefectural government restored the castle a few years later, they insisted on redoing the walls in uchikomihagi-style, with cut stones fitted together to make a smooth surface, ostensibly on the grounds that this was how it would have been done under the Tokugawas, if they’d ever gotten around to a renovation, though everyone knew it was really because this was the style tourists expected to see, even if it isn’t historically accurate.

  Cousin Takako, who used to scamper up and down those old walls like a mountain goat, faster and braver than all the boys they knew, danced before Gyoshin’s mind as the plane banked for the final approach to Yonago Airport. Her best friend and confidante, over the years the two girls had hatched various rebellious plans for escaping the tyranny of the old man – Ojii-san they called him, as if he were just some stranger and not their grandfather, and patriarch of the clan, Heiji Nobutada. She remembered one summer in particular, just before she was to return to the university.

  “No, Taka-chan,” she cried out that day. “You can’t.”

  “I can and I will,” Taka had replied, in a voice as full of steely resolve as her grandfather’s ever was. “Don’t let Ojii-san intimidate you.”

  “But he’ll disown you… cast you out of the family. What will you do for money?”

  A year older than Gyoshin, she’d gone to university a year early and graduated even earlier. How she longed for Takako-san now, for her courage and her daring. Did grandfather realize the magnitude of the loss she represented to the family… and to himself? What she wouldn’t give to be able to confide in her cousin just one more time.

  “He wouldn’t dare, not if you do it, too. Don’t you remember our pact?”

  “We were just kids then. Things are different now.”

  “Are you saying you don’t love Hiroki-san anymore?”

  Just thinking about the lie she uttered next made her gag, and the taste of her own stomach acids at the back of her mouth promised to stick with her for the rest of the day. The plane banked right for its final approach and she clutched at the armrest. Takako died less than a year later, complications of the birth of her daughter – Gyoshin’s niece, or cousin, more accurately, though she didn’t care for such fine distinctions – and Ojii-san disowned the baby just as he had her mother.

  Worse than disowning the granddaughter, Heiji Nobutada exerted his influence to ruin Takako’s husband’s family as well. The Okamotos’ ramen restaurant went under when the bank suddenly called in a loan, and a few months later their son, Yasahiro, lost his position in the prefectural government and could find no other work. Their finances began to seem desperate, and his death in a car accident a year later completed their plunge into real poverty.

  Their daughter, Haru, went to live with her father’s parents, a shining bit of joy amid their otherwise dismal fortunes. Just before she was born, Takako teased Gyoshin with the idea of giving her one of those preposterous names favored by peasants, like Haruhime. “She’ll be our ‘sunlight princess’, and usher in sunnier times.” Gyoshin did what she could for them under the circumstances.

  “Why do you even care?” her brother had asked after the accident. “She brought it on herself. Grandfather warned her what would happen.”

  “And her daughter? She’s our blood, too.”

  “She’s an Okamoto, and besides, you’ll never change his mind about them… or her.”

  “Hasn’t he done enough to them?”

  Gyoshin scowled at the memory of her brother as she walked across the tarmac to the terminal, a breeze straining to ruffle the severe skirt of her blue suit. The year after she graduated from college, finally bold enough to take some matters into her own hands, she’d found the Okamotos a place managing one of the farms at the southern edge of their extensive land holdings in Tottori. The time would come when agricultural reforms, and worse things, would require them to sell off much of the estate, even if Ojii-san had managed to keep the regulators at bay long after less influential families had been forced to comply with the law. But with his attention focused on preserving the cattle and horse ranches, he gave scant attention to a few hundred acres devoted to rice paddies and a cherry orchard.

  Haru-chan was enrolled in the village school, and her auntie Go-Go would come visit whenever she could get away from her civil service job. The pleasure of watching the girl scamper like a mountain goat up and down the hillsides behind the orchard was considerable.

  “I’m home, Grandfather,” she called up the stairs. Sheets still covered the furniture, and a distant clatter came from the east wing – probably Hana making lunch for the old man. Of course, he wouldn’t answer, even if he had heard. “It is done, Grandfather,” she said, once she’d closed the door to his room with an audible click.

  “Gyo-chan,” he croaked out. “My favorite granddaughter.”

  “Your only granddaughter, you mean,” she said, as she sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Will the Soga live up to their word?”

  “They are as hungry as you are.” She glowered at him for a moment, wishing he had asked her brother to handle this, though she knew perfectly well why he couldn’t be trusted with anything this serious.

  “They came up with the money?”

  “Yes, Grandfather, another eighty million yen to pay off a destroyer captain.” As she reported the fact, she couldn’t help feeling a revulsion at having to deal with such mercenary types. What sort of noble cause has to manufacture its occasions through the use of such people? “I’m not sure… I mean, what does it say…” She paused to reset herself, wondering the whole time if she could really discuss her misgivings with him.

  “And another two hundred million for the General?”

  Gyoshin winced as she confirmed the figure. Jin Soga had made a little joke as she showed her the money, stacks of renminbi in a silver-sided case, the point of which was to belittle her family’s contribution to the effort – “It’s a good thing your name is still worth something.” But that didn’t sting as much as the reminder of another errand she had this day, and Ojii-san probably wouldn’t even have noticed it, content to think that his name could still fetch a price. Gyoshin’s only consolation came in recognizing Jin’s incompletely concealed envy that, poor as they were, the Heiji name still carried more weight than all of her money.

  But for all his aristocratic hauteur, both his sons had lacked his character, stern and austere, and no amount of his fire-breathing sufficed to lend them any steel. They were more interested in enjoying the perks
of their fading social position. Speed-boating around Miho Bay, chasing thrills in fast cars and last-minute junkets around Asia and Europe – the old man expressed his displeasure, but had no other heirs, and despised the more distant cousins – and when the brothers crashed their private plane in a densely populated neighborhood in Takamatsu, the financial settlements practically bankrupted the family. With Takako dead, all that remained of the next generation was Gyoshin and her brother… Grandfather retreated to his bedroom to scheme and dream ever more outlandishly.

  “I’ll go check on your lunch,” she said, having heard a slight commotion downstairs and not wishing his attention to be drawn in that direction. From the landing, she heard Hana shushing a little girl, and quickstepped it down the stairs to see the bent old man.

  “He’s waiting for you,” she said to the housekeeper, and Hana bowed her head before scuttling back to the kitchen.

  “Heiji-san,” the old man said, bowing more deeply than she thought warranted, or safe for his back. “I am sorry to bother you again.” The little girl stood on the front porch, perhaps afraid to come back in after Hana’s initial greeting. Gyoshin took the opportunity to press a folded envelope into his hands, holding them between both of hers, as if afraid he would refuse it. She’d liquidated her savings the day before to raise the funds.

  “Hideki-san, welcome,” she said, as she guided him out onto the porch, quietly underscoring how unwelcome he really was there, despite her feelings. “It’s all there, three million yen. Will it be enough?”

  Old man Okamoto nodded under grey brows, eyes glistening. “Thank you, Heiji-san. The Taue-ki will be delivered next week.”

  “Just in time…”

  “Yes, just in time for planting.”

  “… and for someone’s birthday party,” Gyoshin said, reaching her arms around little Haru from behind and pulling her into a hug. “You can’t hide from your auntie Go-Go.”